“What did you do to make those boys laugh?” queried Harry.
“I just looked at them. Want me to look at you the same way?”
“No, I don’t. I want you to be good and not get fired before you’re hired,” smiled Harry.
This brought a snicker from Teddy, and the grin had not vanished from his impish face when they paused before Mr. Marsh’s desk.
“All right, boys?” was his cheerful inquiry. “Let me have your slips. You are to go to Department 40, Burke, and you, Harding, to exchange desk Number 10, on the first floor. I’ll send messengers with you to these departments.”
“Please, sir, we would like to know something about our work and where we go to school,” put in Harry, anxiously.
“I am coming to that,” smiled the pleasant young man. “You must be in the store, at the boys’ assembly room, every morning at twenty minutes after seven o’clock. I will assign both of you to Company A, which goes to school every Monday and Thursday morning. On these mornings you will form in line in the assembly room with the other boys of your section and march to the schoolrooms, which are on this floor at the opposite side of the building. When school is dismissed you are to go directly to your departments. At ten minutes past eleven every boy must be in his department, or receive a demerit for loitering. That is, unless he has an exceptionally good excuse.”
Mr. Marsh took a number of cards, ruled off into little squares, from a pigeon hole in his desk. Consulting the slips the boys had given him, he wrote their names in the blank space at the top, reserved for that purpose. “These are your report cards,” he explained. “If you can keep them clear, you will be the kind of boys that this store needs. These little squares are for demerits. Untidiness, disobedience of orders, failure in lessons, bad behavior in school, in fact, all the things which you know to be wrong, but do wilfully, will put black marks on this card. Your aisle manager, or your teacher, can give them to you, and ten demerits mean that you will be sent to Mr. Keene’s office. He is the special superintendent for the boys, and it rests with him whether you stay in the store or not. But first of all it rests with yourselves, boys. It is just as easy to be neat and obedient and manly as it is to be untidy, disobedient and unruly. Remember that. If there is anything you do not understand or that you wish to know you can come to me between five and half past five o’clock on any afternoon, after first having received permission from your aisle manager to do so. Now, are there any questions you wish to ask before going to your departments?”
“How much time do we have for lunch?” asked Teddy.